


Lily White and Poppy Red

by nyctanthes



Series: Prompt Ficlets [8]
Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Anger, Angst, But then someone new comes along and shakes things up, Complicated Relationships, F/F, F/M, Persephone pov, Unresolved Conflict, When you're married for eternity the same problems crop up over and over again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-04 04:40:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20465159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyctanthes/pseuds/nyctanthes
Summary: She has, you see, been here before.





	Lily White and Poppy Red

**Author's Note:**

> My first foray into this fandom. 
> 
> Written for fan_flashworks challenge #273 (Amnesty): _Drinking Alone_.
> 
> CW: References to excessive consumption of alcohol.

Singing _La la la la la la laaaa_  
  
Singing _La la la la la la laaaa_  
  
Singing _La la la la lala _bull  
  
Singing _La la la la lala _shit  
  
Singing _Bull-fucking-shit_  
  
The problem is that this, the two of them, has happened before. She reckons she's gone through these motions previously; more than once. She can’t fully, can't entirely remember, time and drink doing what they do to memory and gray matter, even the memory and gray matter of goddesses.  
  
But this particular reunion, this renewal of vows feels too familiar. Step, sway, shuffle. Shuffle, step, sway. Hot breath of the underworld on her brow. Unrelenting arms, like oceans like mountains, wrapped around her in belonging. In possession. In _love_.   
  
If it were new and unexpected, welcome, she wouldn’t feel this weary, this resigned. Would she?   
  
But why expect their life together to be different, when the essentials have not changed? If she is to travel up then down, then up then down: in rhythm and sorrow, in perpetuity. Why not, again and again, come together, drift apart, come together?   
  
If the stories are to be believed, this is what they do. And why shouldn’t they?  
  
The boy leaves. The girl, the others, the status quo return. Once more they are together yet completely alone. Hades a man, nothing more than a man that way. Full of big words and grand gestures when the corn is high. When the tension is ripe and his kingdom (his ego, his legacy, his _pride_) are under threat of being trampled.   
  
His attention drifts, as it’s bound to. What is he to do? She’s gone upstairs, left him all on his lonesome: only thousands of brainless shades, one gossipy old man and three slinky crones for company. Did she expect him, this time, to be different? After the building is done for the day. After the banging and clanging, the pounding and sounding, the moaning and groaning of the bells, cart wheels, whistles and pulleys, the hammers, pickaxes, dynamite and shovels are done for the night. (Day or night, sunset or sunrise, rain or shine. What difference does it make, down below?) Did she dare hope and wish and pray, weak willed immortal that she is, that this time the change would stick? For the two of them. For Hadestown. 

Perhaps.

Of course not.

And yet.

She does not cease to wonder. Why need souls already dead be given purpose? Wasn’t it enough that they’d relinquished love, life, sun, sky, air and memory? Must they also work for the privilege of being forgotten? Hades - eternally unappreciated by subjects and family, in charge of the realm even the gods fear - his reasoning once made sense. But serpentine slogans, convoluted works and justifications have hollowed out his wall. And she (he, they) lost her (his, their) high ground long ago. 

“That’s what drink is for, my dearest love, my very own,” she spits, only a slight_ ssshh_ after the _is_, an infinitesimal marbling of the mouth. Only a hint of distaste in his level, lizard gaze.  
  
“Check,” he replies. As if there’s a chance that this time she will win their game.  
  
When it's over, before she leaves he lets her crawl across the table, knock all the pieces off the board. He lets her sit in his lap, bill and coo and dribble sloppy kisses along his neck. Even through the fog, thick and heady, she senses him looking past her, feels how his slack grip hardly holds her in place. After all, there is work to be done.

Months later, when she returns (when she is fetched, always too soon, like an errant dog or a sulky, peevish slave), she is reminded of the other reason for his distraction. Sulfur, coal, clay and stone are not, will never be her provenance; but little, pretty girls, soft and round, still becoming will always belong to her.

She recalls flowering vines twined through her hair; lush garlands around her throat, hanging between breasts more suggestion than fact. Pale, tender soles of feet that walked across Mother’s plush green fields, not a splintered pebble to be found. Curious, eager (innocent) hands that gathered flowers in the light of the sun. Flowers that forever bloomed, that did not dare rot.   
  
This child possesses none of these memories: not a fraction, a blossom, a blade. She no longer recollects summer and plenty, taken from her long before she descended, before she was tempted. She retains only images of frozen ground and leaden sky, only muscle memory of the shivery shakes generated by a steel wind that cuts through tattered clothes, that swirls endlessly round tight, cramped bellies.   
  
But Hades is a man and he sees in her, he makes of her what he will. A little bird, wings clipped, singing for her supper.  
  
She sits, beckons. “Come child. Sit with me.” _Drink with me._ And she does.   
  
Boxes of wine - burgundy, gold and blush. Rotgut of tarnished bronze that boils her heart before she’s finished swallowing it down. Moonshine clear as the waters that once were hers. It sizzles and scrapes her esophagus. Such a human word, base and grunting, functional. Yet it appears she has one too.   
  
She tells the girl stories, sings to her of the newly verdant world above. Of olive groves and lemon trees baking in the dusty, orange heat of June. Of terraced fields of rice, both dry and flooded, swirling patterns of emerald set against misting mountains and turquoise sky. Of wine, true wine, that sparkles and shimmers in the glass: early summer mornings, late spring evenings in every sip. Sweet and crisp and endless. A world that exists only in pockets, only for the few, but the child doesn’t know there is still nothing for her to miss.  
  
One day, one night - what difference does it make, but she continues to ask - she is especially low and red. She sings to the girl, already fading, dimmer than she was just days and nights ago, of that callow boy. Of his endless wandering and temporary respite in the arms of another. Not his true love, whom he’d forsaken and would never forgive himself for casting aside; but he is a man, hence forever willing to make do with whatever, whomever he finds in front of him. She sings his lament for his truest love. The one he deserted, _abandoned_ through his damnable weakness: so brilliant, so pale and fearful, so easily distracted. Silently the child weeps, though she cannot remember why.   
  
She kisses her then, soft. The bruised, moist skin below each eye. The delicate corners of her mouth. The space between her bottom lip and chin, where the tears collect. Delicious.  
  
“Silly girl,” she croons. “There’s no use in crying. You’ve got to take your comfort where you can.”  
  
“Silly girl,” she warbles. “Men are kind, until they’re not. But I’m here. I’m listening.”

**Author's Note:**

> Bits and bobs of text, including the title, are taken from the musical, and in particular the song _Flowers_.


End file.
